Escape II is an enjoyable hack filled with some pretty interesting stuff, and a lot of blue. (Literally everything is blue.) It's got a nice hub, and plenty of secrets. Not to mention every major item can be grabbed from multiple spots it seems. Plenty of secrets make this to be something you'll get plenty of time exploring.

There are some different features in this hack, including a Super Missile Beam and Shinespark control. The shinespark control in particular sets up for some interesting puzzles and does allow for some very interesting movement through rooms. The hack does have some problems though. For one, it uses one color. Another thing is a particular X-Ray room is extremely obnoxious, even if finding it uses an underused feature of the Googly Eye enemies. And sometimes, the hack just doesn't flow too well. Might be from entering the warp zone on accident and having to take a long way back, but there were some dull points.

I would definitely recommend this hack. Planet Blue SpoSpo is worth visiting and you'll likely enjoy it. It feels a lot like a single-color extended edition of a vanilla hack with additional features.

Don't stop me now
I'm having such a good time
I'm having a ball
Don't stop me now
If you wanna have a good time
Just gimme a call
Don't stop me now ('cause I'm having a good time)
Don't stop me
Yes I'm having a good time
I don't wanna stop at alllllllllllll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05gUmiMkFnA&list=PLLHMfTgkm_ohVfDg_65l6GgjqcXx5Ps-1

Escape 2 does a lot of things really well, and the alterations to the movement mechanics are some of the most ambitious and rewarding that I've come across. The reason I gave this a 4 is because of how confusing I found it to make my way around the planet. With that said, it's a really well made hack and pretty fun as well. 8.25/10

A frustrating hack that I grown to like. This game have so many dead end. You go down a path forever to discover that you don't have the necessary upgrade to push through at the very end. Level design is bland in many places and there's a lot of padding. The hub mechanic is interesting but also not intuitive. Graphics are alright but rough in some spots. I also got the Wave beam glitch that broke my beams and made them likes infinite super missiles with plasma, wave and ice properties. It kinda broke the balance of the last part of the game, which might actually be a good thing since I could breeze through it. Difficulty is vanilla for the most part with a bit of a spike by the end. Even with all the frustration, I found myself wanting to play more and ended up finishing it. It's worth playing through but require some patience.

I think this is one of the best-of-the-best hacks. It was delightful to play and had the longest engaging playtime of any hack I've played to-date. My play time estimates 7:21 but that was the QUICKEST I beat it, skipping some major sections. I went back and got quite a lot more play out of it. I think it has high replay value too, and offers speedrunning challenge as well.

There are some changes to the game dynamics, including the introduction of a warp zone, and the ability to change directions and morph while shinesparking, which is wild! Areas are renamed, and the entire map is totally redesigned, but in spite of that it mostly feels pretty vanilla, i.e. one area feels like Brinstar, another like Norfair, etc. The map is huge and areas require revisiting more different times in a typical course of play.

People complain about "everything being blue", but...come on, it's not that bad! Yes, there is a lot more blue, but there were plenty of other colors in the palette too. I never felt like the color palette bored me. Also, come on, blue Norfair? That's some genius to make it mostly blue and still look and feel very "hot". I say, well-done. And the base background of blue makes the other colors (red, green, yellow) really pop out visually. Blue, being a calm color, is a good choice for background colors. I actually thought the color palette worked pretty well; it never looked amateurish.

Highlights:
* Very accessible, and difficulty level ramps up gradually. The hack's difficulty is listed as "unknown" but I'd characterize it as vanilla. This struck me as no harder than the original game, and easier in many points. I would recommend this as a good first hack to play.
* Tons of secrets. Secrets also have a wide range of difficulty levels, both in terms of level of observation to find them, and difficulty of getting into them or through them to get whatever items they contain. Some secrets even evade detection by the X-ray scope, which I like: it makes the X-ray scope useful, but it also makes it not take the fun out of the game. The secrets make the world fun to traverse over and over again. This game is also GREAT at giving hints, things like "Hey, look, there's this area over here you can't access...maybe look for a secret in a nearby room." And, just as I like, some of the hints are more obvious than others.
* The world is massive, but very easy to navigate. The warp zone is a cool idea; I think it is well-executed. There are so many different ways back to the warp zone that it makes the world feel like everything is close to everything else. I never felt like I was bored running from one corner of the map to the other. I also think that the warp zone and well-connected world minimizes the need for savestating.
* AMAZINGLY non-linear, and the nonlinearity is executed better than in any other hack. There are multiple ways to get nearly every major item, and this includes both the item being found in multiple locations, and in some cases, the access to an item in a particular place being accessible by multiple paths. Sometimes an item can be gotten with great skill earlier on, but accessible by anyone later, like the X-ray scope in Brinstar which you can nab with a grapple swing...but one that takes a lot of skill and luck...or you can get it by tricky IBJ off a long surface of crumbleblocks...but it's easiest to get with the speed booster, which you probably will get much later. So a lot of the items become progressively easier or more obvious to get, over time.
* Rich potential for sequence breaking. Even though there doesn't seem to be a single, intended linear path, there do seem to be multiple intended / "normal" paths, but on top of that there yet more ways to find alternate paths relying on secrets or more advanced techniques.
* Walljump, and more advanced techniques like IBJ, mockballing, shortcharges, and opening doors from the wrong side, never seem to be required, but can benefit you and allow you to save time and/or sequence break. I like this.
* Controllable shinespark is cool and avoids some of the INSANE difficulty of the shinespark puzzles in the Hyper metroid hack. Doesn't require shortcharges (a beef I have with some hacks, *cough* SM Decision *cough*)
* I loved the Megaman-games-style "You need to fight every boss again all at once." deal at the end. It may have been unrealistic and breaking in spirit with the rest of the game, but I thought it was creative and fun.
* This hack manages to keep the nonlinearity going right up until the end. Not only does the escape sequence have multiple ways out...but...even before that, there are multiple paths to mother brain. I was impressed with this, and it makes the game engaging to play through more than once.

Subtle Critiques / Room for Improvement:
* Morph ball too easy to get. Come on! This is so trite, at least make me go through a few areas to find the morph ball.
* No original music. For how new and different this hack was, I thought the vanilla music was conspicuous.
* Besides color changes, pretty much no changes to the visuals. The tiles aren't even used in particularly creative ways; the world felt mostly like the original game, just new, different, and bigger.
* Uncreative bosses. I also though the bosses were way too easy. This is the only game where Phantoon was a joke, and Draygon and Gold Torizo were also major pushovers. Except Ridley who killed me once, none of the other bosses killed me. I like to be challenged. I think part of this is that you can get WAAAY too many energy tanks before getting to any of the major bosses.
* Some puzzle rooms, especially shinespark ones, started to get repetetive. Contrast with Hyper Metroid where each puzzle room is fundamentally different and makes you think in a fundamentally new way or discover a new technique or trick. In this hack, the first shinespark maze was fun, but after that they got tedious.
* I wasn't crazy about the "fall through a pit and get warped back to the start of the puzzle room" dynamic that many puzzle rooms rely on. Although convenient for the player, it made this hack feel a little contrived or unnatural. I like the way the original game and most other hacks work, which is to build the "reset" into the structure of the room, i.e. fall through a crumble block, roll back to where you started.
* I found the "same major item occurs in two places" feature to be annoying. Many times I solved some puzzle or discovered a secret, only to find an empty chozo statue, which I learned from subsequent playthroughs and/or watching others' videos, was actually an alternate way to get an item I had already gotten. I didn't like this. I'd rather the alternate ways of getting items instead rely on multiple paths converging to a single spot to get the item.
* Gray door abuse. This is a criticism that I also have of Hyper Metroid. There are too many gray doors and they're positioned in such a way that makes unclear what you need to do to open them. Some open when you kill certain bosses, some open when you save the animals, some you need to kill enemies in the room itself, and some open from the other side. I think a lot of these could be avoided by better design.
* For how nonlinear this hack was, I still got stuck twice. I found it very hard to find Phantoon and I actually only found him after getting the X-ray scope and scouring everything. That held me back a lot, because lacking Varia pretty much ground my progress to a halt. The second time I got stuck was trying to find out how to get into lower norfair and access Ridley; it was partly due to my sequence breaking and getting power bombs earlier during a heat run and forgetting about the (obvious) entrance. But it was still slightly annoying.
* Some of the items in later areas were too obvious. Like in lower norfair, both a missile and energy tank sitting right out in the open? Come on; what a waste! Especially given how you need to power-bomb a floor under lava to even get into lower norfair in the first place. At least make the player do something interesting so they can feel a sense of accomplishment getting these items. This felt disappointing.
* I think the dynamic where if you save the animals, it opens up a bunch of secret doors that make certain items accessible very early, kind of ruins the fun of the game. Part of what makes Metroid and its hacks so fun, in my opinion, is the process of wandering around the map searching for the next major item(s) that will open up new paths for me. I like to feel a little stuck at least for a little while, and I like the hack to make me work. In this hack, you can bypass this by saving the animals (one you have the firepower and tools to do so) and opening up those doors, and it just got too easy. Thankfully I discovered this later than I think some people do...but...it didn't sit well with me and I think it threw off the balance of the game, which was already on the easy side. Getting screw attack early REALLY unbalances the game.
* Secret area's quick path to "alternate mother brain", skipping all of Tourian and some of the unique things about this hack that come with it. Yet another example of making it too easy and taking the fun out of it. I even was able to skip Ridley (probably if I had saved the animals earlier I could have skipped more major areas.) I wasn't crazy about this. And putting a recharge station right in front of Mother Brain? That was too much hand-holding for me...it's like a cheat that breaks the game.
* The quick-way-out of the escape sequence? Come on. Yet another example of taking the fun out by making it too easy. The shortcut makes too big a difference...the escape goes from actually somewhat hard to trivially-easy, and that's no good. I'd rather the hack make secrets like this bypass only a modest portion of the escape sequence, i.e. make it a bit easier but without giving you too much.

In spite of all these criticisms, I think this hack is still golden. Yes, it could be improved. But...it's already so freaking good. None of these complaints even docks it one star. And if you don't want those "cheats" you can always just refrain from taking the items opened up from saving the animals and entering the secret area.

I recommend: if you want to play this hack for real, either don't save the animals, or if you do, (a) stay out of the secret area accessed from the warp zone (b) don't get any of the items freed up from saving the animals, and (c) don't shinespark up the first shaft during the escape sequence. You can tell when you've entered the secret areas to get these items because of the peculiar background, the change in music, and appearing in the secret area on the map.

Great hack.
Worst thing about it were both ways of getting tourian missile(although there might be more than one?). I ended up doing both with blue suit, which might have been intended way because there's an easy renewable way of getting it in tourian.
Escapes were trivial compared to attempting to get that missile.